ST. JOSEPH (AP) ó A 15-year-old boy convicted of sexually assaulting two younger boys has been sentenced to prison for a term ranging from 23 and three-quarter years to a maximum of 80 years.

Gideon Falcone originally was charged with 17 felony counts. He agreed to plead guilty in Berrien County Trial Court to two counts of criminal sexual conduct in exchange for the other 15 charges being dropped.

Prosecutors say he lured the 11- and 12-year-old boys to his home, barricaded himself in a bedroom with the boys, struck them with a fireplace poker and forced them to perform oral sex on him.

Falcone lived with his grandparents in New Troy because his mother and father are both behind bars.

The details on this case are quite sketchy. This is what I've been able to discern so far. He has a previous rap sheet involving the sexual abuse of a 7 year old, but it is uncertain how long ago this offense occurred.

So what is wrong here?

Okay...let me see. Both of his parents are behind bars for who knows what, and this child was allowed to go live with his grandparents? I'm sorry, but just an outside observation tells me that his grandparents aren't fit to raise children.

This kid slipped through the cracks of a broken judicial system to offend again, and he's still a kid.

Bryan

_________________________Revenge is nothing more than another way of perpetuating abuse.

What the world needs nowIs some new words of wisdomLike la la la la la la la la la.-David Lowery

Having a friend who will keep a secret for you is worthless compared to a friend who won't keep a secret from you.

Fast forward ten to twenty years in the lives on these 11 and 12 year old victims. Will they be saying, gee it was sad that a 15 year old boy got punished for what he did? I think theyíll have their own life problems to try and deal with as a result of being sexually abused by one who had power and authority over them.

If Iím detecting sympathy for the perp in this thread, then Iím afraid to say that sympathy is not coming from me. Who will stand in the gap for the victims? I will.

i think we get a picture in our head when somebody says 15 year old but i have known 15 year olds that were 6'3 200lbs . it's true he had screwed up parents but so did many of us right? no sympathy here either

My own view on this - and it's only my opinion - is that the problem of child abuse is only trivialized and mocked when lawmakers, juries and the public look at it in simplistic terms - as if this 15-year-old, for example, is an "abuser" in the same sense that a serial pedophile who has got through 200 boys is an abuser.

So far as compassion is concerned, yep, my heart is full of compassion for this kid. It's not likely that he just decided one day to force those two boys (and others) to go down on him. He's probably re-enacting things he himself has experienced, and surely something big is wrong if both his parents have been banged away in jail. Any T with experience in CSA issues will tell us that abused teenagers are often tempted to take it to younger kids for a variety of psychological reasons. The distorted thinking that leads them to do this is the same reasoning that leads other boys to drugs, prostitution and suicide, while others somehow make it through without succumbing to any of this.

But at the end of the day it's common sense, not compassion, that ought to get the authorities to look more closely at these cases. This kid, for example, has been condemned to at least 23 years in prison, so now what? Will he get the offense-specific therapy and other help he needs? Not likely - he will probably get raped himself while in prison. And what about his education; will he be able to finish that? Nope. Instead he will get introduced to the criminal ways of others. So when he emerges from prison at the age of 38 he's likely to be a bitter hardened sociopath. How has that solved anything?

It's not that I am "soft" on perps or opposed to a robust approach to CSA. But we need to be aware that emotional responses to the problem will never solve it. It may slake our thirst for vengeance to have murderers executed, for example, but studies show that capital punishment has never served to reduce the rate of violent crime anywhere. In the same way, measures taken against perpetrators of sexual crimes in the legal systems and courts are often irrelevant to the issue and do nothing to reduce the rate of CSA in a community.

Much love,Larry

_________________________Nobody living can ever stop meAs I go walking my freedom highway.Nobody living can make me turn back:This land was made for you and me.(Woody Guthrie)

The fifteen year old boy who abused me was, I think, abused too. I remember vividly being at his home one time, he was trying to get me to spend the night after we'd been playing outside. While we were playing he had gotten me alone again and, well, he did what he usually did. His grandparents lived there too. When we got back to his house, his grandfather gave me a look that chilled me to the bone, he looked at me like I was a piece of meat and he was a starving man. I told him that I had to call my mom to ask for permission. I did everything that I could to infer that I didn't want to spend the night there. He and his grandfather were standing right there by the phone, I couldn't just say that I didn't want to stay there, I was always taught to be polite. My mom, who was probably wanting to go out drinking, just wanted me out of the way. I ended up just pretending that my mom said no and I walked home in the dark. My mom never asked why I came home. Nobody ever asked anything.

I don't have to forgive the guy that abused me but I do understand a bit of his history. He had a choice to continue his 'family tradition' or not, he chose to abuse me. I don't know if he went on to abuse others. I have forgiven myself for not telling anyone, for being driven all of my life to make up for all of my self percieved inadequacies. If there had been more openness about CSA maybe I would have said something, but this was the fifties in a small southwestern town, so I kept silent and the abuse went on until his family moved away suddenly.

I'm rambling, but that's what I was thinking when I read this. That teenager needs help, not incarceration for 23 years. He has to accept responsibility for his actions, realize how he has hurt those younger boys, and hopefully heal himself. This is the time to stop the cycle of abuse. When he gets out of prison I think that he will be a much worse threat than when he went in.

Steve

_________________________
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

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